Personal Reasons
by hophophop
Summary: Part 12 (& the conclusion) of Dark & Deep, a series of related (mostly) stand-alone stories. "Is this more of a lifetime appointment?"
1. Chapter 1: Days

**chapter one: days**  
_"So, where would you like to start?"_

* * *

She set the tray on the lock room table and carried a glass of water and a bowl of tomato soup over to his desk next to the study fireplace, where he was supposedly sorting through the stacks of papers accumulated over the last week. She didn't think much sorting was going on, but the piles were neater, and there was space for her to set the dishes down in front of him. Not that he appreciated it.

"What is this?"

"Still missing those faculties, huh?" She returned to the table and started on her own bowl of soup.

"I'm not hungry, and you're not my personal valet no matter what was said in the past, and I'm trying to work."

"You may be making a valiant effort, but I'm here to tell you you're failing miserably. You've been pushing those same files back and forth across the desk all day. You're still barely sleeping. I doubt you can remember the last time you ate, and you're dehydrated. If you don't take more liquids, at least, you'll end up back in the hospital for real this time."

He grumbled something she couldn't identify but picked up the glass and drank the contents in one long draft. She returned to his desk with the pitcher from the tray and refilled his glass. "At least two more of those." She set the pitcher down on one of the stacks to his left.

"Don't— I don't want any water damage," and he reached across awkwardly to move the pitcher with his good arm and set it on the floor. "If I kick this over, you'll have to mop it up."

"Don't kick it over then."

After a moment of starting irritably at the computer screen he began eating the soup. She took a few more spoonfuls herself and tried to work out what she wanted to say. In a minute he was going to complain about her not-saying whatever it was she wasn't saying and she felt defensive enough already. She finished her own water and watched as he drank half of his second glass. When he didn't take up his spoon again, she began.

"Listen. It doesn't have to be me, and it doesn't have to be Alfredo, but you need to talk about what happened with somebody." He didn't turn around but he hunched his shoulders higher against her words and said nothing. "The trigger didn't disappear when they took Moriarty into custody. Honestly, you were just as shell-shocked in that hospital as she pretended to be, and that was before all hell broke loose. You said learning the truth gave you clarity, but seems to me it was a pretty brutal lesson."

"No. Discussing this is indulgence. None of it was real. I've moved on." He spoke to the computer screen, dark now from a screen saver, and in the reflection his eyes were shadowed, his face without affect.

"Yeah. It may be indulgence to dwell on blame and guilt, or to try to fathom why Moriarty is the way she is, but your experience was real. All of it, starting in London. Regardless of who she was or who she was trying to be, who you were then was not some game of make-believe."

He turned his head slightly to talk to her across his bad shoulder. "A game is exactly what I was to her. A curiosity, a diversion, an experiment. And when I was no longer sufficiently diverting, she set me on the track and watched me propel myself into the abyss so she could get on with her plans. And then she came back and tried to do it again." She could see the strain in his jaw, and his right hand came over to rub the part of his arm where the edge of the sling cut in above his elbow.

"Okay, yes. She manipulated you. But I'm not talking about her deception; I'm talking about your feelings." He made a disparaging sound. "Here's another way to look at it: the other person in a relationship is always ultimately unknowable. We can try, but short of employing those _You Can Learn Telepathy_ techniques, we can't ever truly know the other. There are always layers, some conscious, some not. That the Irene you knew was more consciously constructed than most—"

"Ha!"

"—doesn't invalidate the Sherlock who loved her."

He shook his head, unwilling to concede. "I should have known when she asked me about the last year and a half." She sighed, frustrated. It was wallowing, but if he didn't let it out, it would fester. At least he was letting it out.

"At the time, I assumed it was an effect of the mind control, her not being clear what year it was, and I couldn't bring myself to correct her by pointing out how much longer it had been. Besides, I was more focused on not telling her what I'd done after she died. Now I wonder if it was a test, to see if I had any suspicions about her story. Or a means to tighten the leash of guilt, because of course she knew very well what I'd done—" he breath caught, and he looked down and adjusted the sling some more. "A year and a half, that was actually months ago, right in the middle of your contract."

"I know. The week we met Alfredo, right?"

He shifted his chair around and looked at her, surprised.

"I can do the math. 'One year, 6 months, 22 days' you said," and he nodded, remembering that night, feeling more shame and the fading echo of that vengeance-fueled rage. It would be so easy to rekindle it, for another kind of vengeance. She was frowning now, observing him. He unclenched his teeth and let out a long breath. No. Not again.

Her anxiety subsided as she watched him deliberately relax his features, and she went on. "So. Three weeks before that. And that's when we met Alfredo. We were working on that office bomb case. That poor guy in the wall."

"Not that 'poor'; he was a blackmailer. I don't mean he deserved to end up like that. But I don't sympathize with him particularly."

She tilted her head in acknowledgment. "I"m sorry for his wife, at least." She sighed again. "That feels like a long time ago."

"It does, and that's why her question should have been a warning." She turned back to her bowl and swallowed more soup along with her exasperation with his continued self-recriminations. "You were right, then, too." He turned back toward the desk, carefully touching the stack of papers he'd been shuffling.

"You said you didn't know if I was dreading the day you'd leave or counting the seconds, and that captured my dilemma handily. I couldn't imagine moving forward either way. I wanted to stop time, tread water a while longer. And maybe I'd eventually be too tired and give up, and be free from the effort and tedium of the never-ending laps."

She sat up taller at that. "Are you telling me you were suicidal?"

"No. No, just exhausted from fighting it all. Grief. Staying sober. You. Myself." He stood up suddenly and wobbled, a little light-headed. He listed slightly as he slowly made his way over to sink down on the library couch, wincing as his shoulder hit the cushions. "I don't know. I felt it again, for a moment in the hospital, with her. She asked me if I'd rather she had had me killed back then. Before it all started, when she first contracted Gotlieb. And I said yes." He looked down, abashed. "You know. You heard the recording. I'm sorry."

She had heard it and wasn't surprised by his answer to Moriarty's question but it had still made her heart skip a beat, that he should be brought so low. There was no doubt in her mind he had meant it, and the idea that she might not have had the experience of these past months— She'd pressed her palm to her breastbone then, in the hospital, as she listened to the conversation through the speakers in the other room, and she recalled that pressure again, now, and tried not to let it show in her face as she got up to sit in the chair by the fireplace, across from him. "Sorry for what?"

"I meant, it was exhaustion speaking. Because if I hadn't been manipulated by her, if she hadn't, or made me think— and if I hadn't broken then, you, and this—" He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. You're so tired, she thought. Just let it go. He kept his eyes closed as he continued, "And by feeling, even for a moment, that I would have been better off— I was giving up on this, our partnership. I won't ever do that, Watson. Not ever." She heard the echo of his insistence in the bathroom that no harm would come to her and shook her head again, smiling a little this time. His eyes were still closed.

She laughed at him, gently. "You really need to stop making promises you have no means to keep, although I appreciate the sentiment." He frowned, whether at her correction or her reference to sentiment, she didn't know. "Truly, I do. But it's okay. It's okay to be too tired to hold on. Besides, if you did let go it wouldn't matter. Because I didn't. We're never both going to let go at the same time; that's what partnership is. You can rest now. It's all right."

She was momentarily surprised when he responded literally, nudging off his shoes, sliding sideways to lift his feet up, and easing back on his right side to stretch out on the couch. He stuffed a pillow behind his back as a buffer for his shoulder and raised his right forearm up over his eyes, and she went to the window to close the shutters to the bright afternoon light. By the time she turned back, his arm had slipped down and he was out.

She returned to the chair and let her own eyes close. The dim room felt peaceful for the first time in a long while, street noises muffled and the relentless pressures of the past week gone. Well, fading, in any case. Gone was a long way off.

* * *

The night it all came apart, he'd been sitting in this same chair when she finally returned to the brownstone with her questions about the psychological warfare waged against him and new resolve to proceed with the investigation despite an absent partner. He had sounded so happy to see her, so changed from the somber shell he had been since Irene that she was immediately suspicious.

"Sherlock! Why are you here? What happened?" There were signs of a struggle by the stairs and a dark smear on the wall. He was alone in the library, no sign that anyone had kept company with him there. Her suspicion solidified into certainty. "Where's Irene?" she asked, her voice hard and cold.

"No longer with us." He laughed harshly then, switching to an exclamation of pain as he curled forward, hand on his shoulder. "I'll tell you everything, but first there's a little matter of a bullet I could use your help with."

She was at his side, pushing his hand away and carefully raising the towel to examine what was underneath before she realized she'd moved. "What the hell— Did Irene— We need to get you to a hospital."

"There's no time for hospitals; I need you to deal with it."

"What happened?" she repeated as she gently bent him forward so she could examine the rest of his back to see the extent of the damage and bleeding. "How long have you been sitting here? This looks to be at least a few hours old. What did Irene do? Something's not right with the story we've been told."

"My dear Watson, you have no idea. Or maybe you do; after this evening I shouldn't presume to know anything at all."

*.*.*

Being in shock for at least a few hours by the time she arrived had made him giddy and voluble by turns, and he kept darting his head around as if expecting a third person in the room with them. When she finally got the story out of him, she realized her hands had been acting of their own accord, cutting away his vest and shirt, sponging off the blood, assessing and preparing to extract the bullet and stitch him up. By the time she looked, really looked and saw her gloved hands tipped with blood and armed with forceps and needle she thought she might be in shock herself.

It was as if she were watching herself work on his back from across the room. She froze for a second and then deliberately retreated, letting her detached consciousness observe from afar as the best means to get things done. It was a kind of acclimation therapy, she supposed, first the autopsy and now this. Low-risk surgical procedures, work her way back—

"This is stupid. You should be in the hospital right now," she said, hoping the tremor wasn't audible in her voice.

*.*.*

She woke abruptly, startled by something she couldn't identify. She groaned as she sat up, her neck painfully stiff from the awkward angle she'd slipped into, still in the chair. The blanket from the couch had been draped over her, and she was alone in the room. It was dark outside, the only light from the table lamp in the lock room. She checked her phone for the time: 3am; she'd slept for over ten hours. She hoped he'd gotten half as much. She heard the sound again, the squawk of the ancient bathroom faucet being turned off, and a few moments later he came down the stairs carrying the pitcher.

"You should be resting," she said.

"You doctors and your contradictory orders. I was refilling my pitcher. You were snoring so beautifully, I didn't want to wake you to ask you to do it."

"I wasn't snoring."

"Did I tell you my newest security camera records audio?" He sat down at the lock table and poured a glass of water, saluting her with it before drinking it down.

She stood up and stretched, arms up overhead and then down to hug her calves before joining him at the table. He pulled the cup she used in the bathroom out of the top of his sling and set it down for her.

"Handy, that," she said, hearing the pun as she said it, and shook her head. "Sorry."

"Have some water, Watson," he said, and he filled her cup to the brim.


	2. Chapter 2: Weeks

_"It has its costs."_

* * *

There were times when it came over her suddenly: "This is what I'm doing now." It wasn't always when they were out on a case. She might be washing dishes (just hers), or pulling a storage box from under her bed, or walking down the street to the coffee shop where she liked to sit and nurse a latte and read something that had nothing to do with work that week. She was usually alone when the thought came to her and made her grin. She was usually alone when it came and made her want to cry.

* * *

The image that flared when he first heard the sound was of _her_, sobbing and screaming in his room, reaching for him one moment and pushing him away the next. The still-active guilt reflex was quickly neutralized now by new bursts of anger and shame that he had been so weak, so stupid. But this sound continued, and it was nothing like that memory, and he shifted back to the present, confused and then concerned. It was Watson, obviously. The water was running in the shower and perhaps she thought one sound would mask the other. Or perhaps there was no premeditation involved.

He stood at the base of the stairs, head tilted to catch the fine distinction between fluid and breath in the rush from above, uncertain how to proceed. Then the harsh squeak of the faucet and silence. The squeal of the metal shower curtain rings as she pushed the curtain aside, possibly accompanied by a shuddering breath. A faint thud of footfall out of the clawfoot tub, not an insignificant step for someone of her height. He considered whether he had reason to go upstairs, something to review on multiple screens, or perhaps an apiary task, that would take him past the closed door of the bathroom, or her own room if she's quicker than that, and so catch some other auditory clue on his way.

He shook his head and walked into the library instead. Those tricks were not ones he wanted to employ here, in their home. It was either none of his business, or it was; if the latter, he'd be informed. Or if not exactly informed, additional information would come to light over time and deduction would occur. Right now there was insufficient data to proceed, and he had not been assigned the case. Move on.

When she came downstairs 15 minutes later, there was no indication of undue stress or strain. Perhaps it had simply been a pressure release. For all he knew, she cried every time she took a shower. Well, no, he did know that was not the case. But no matter. Let it go.

And yet despite repeated efforts to dispel it from his mind, he found his thoughts continuing to return to the sound. After she went to bed, he gave up and tried instead to understand why it bothered him. Clearly, not knowing the cause or context was vexing, but there were any number of things about Watson's emotions and demeanor that made no sense and yet never distracted him like this.

When Irene— When that woman had cried out, his first instinct was immediate and unquestioned; old intimacy and new responsibility intertwined to produce a single impulse to embrace her, with no question or hesitation until she pushed him away. Watson, however. There was a kind of intimacy between them and he certainly felt responsibility for her, but the nature of that intimacy and responsibility was so far removed from the meaning of those words in relation to— well, they might as well be entirely separate concepts. He supposed that's what they were.

His intimacy with Watson was accepting that if he didn't let her fall asleep by 2am for at least three hours, she'd be useless the next day. Knowing how many layers and what length of sleeve she found comfortable at different temperatures. Trusting that she recognized the tone of his voice belying his disparaging words about keeping up with him at a crime scene when he was in fact so very energized by having her there sharing the discovery with him.

His responsibility for, or to, her was currently under negotiation. His inclination and her preferences were not in full alignment. He had a strong suspicion he would be ceding considerable ground once the boundaries were redrawn.

The intoxication of that time before, in London, was yet another layer of his addiction, he saw now, and one she had used to control him, but that was not the whole of it. The emotional and physical intimacy he had felt then had opened a door to a private sanctuary where he found a form of sexual expression he hadn't known existed. A singular experience and something set apart.

What he shared with Watson was everything else.

He didn't discount what he'd learned in that little room (and conceivably it could be revisited in time), but compared to all the rest, it _was_ little. His relationship with Watson was in and of the whole world, not a retreat from it. If he had to make the trade, as it appeared he did, or had, it was worth it. He had to wonder, though, if coming to terms with a similar exchange was behind the sound he'd heard beneath the shower spray.

* * *

She finally agreed to self-defense training, not because she thought he was right (she knew he was) or even because of Moriarty's gunman, but because she needed to spend time with other people. Something else she'd learned in medical school: her studies improved when she spent time with people who were not medical students. Now she needed to find people who were not involved in law enforcement or investigation. Sherlock had wanted her to take private lessons with one of his contacts, but she insisted on choosing from the replies he received according to who taught groups.

"You can invite people over here, you know, " he said one afternoon as they sorted through a suspect's marble collection looking for ceramic bullets they suspected were hidden among the glass baubles.

She had three marbles in each palm, eyes closed as she balanced them to discern whether one hand was heavier than the other. "Invite people over for what?"

"Socializing. Dinner. Sex. Whatever you like. I can make myself scarce for a few hours."

"Because you don't want to meet my friends?"

"If you wanted me to meet your friends, surely that would have happened by now, hmm?"

She looked at him, nonplussed. "You're making some assumptions."

"You made them first."

"I don't— No. It has nothing to do with you. I prefer to combine socializing with leaving the house. I like going out, being some place different for a little while. This is not new; I never had people over when I had my own place."

"No one? Not even your former paramours."

"That's a little different. Anyway, that's a moot point at the moment."

"By choice?"

"Do you even want to meet my friends? Or would this be just another data expedition?"

"Those are not mutually exclusive motivations."

"True." She wasn't sure what to think about this. They lived together and worked together. They rarely did anything together outside of those contexts, but those contexts frequently filled all day, every day. She did want time away, with other people, and she liked being exposed to other views, both geographic and intellectual. But she could see that did not preclude him coming along, some of the time, and she found she was curious to know what that would be like. Spending time with him unrelated to work and home. She couldn't even remember the last time they ate at a restaurant instead of ordering take out. Who knows what sort of data she might acquire about him in the company of others.

Although Emily had apologized, they hadn't gotten together again since the night she got arrested, and inviting her over to prove Sherlock's point seemed a bad idea. "Occasionally other friends of the folks in my kickboxing class come along when we go eat, after. Do you want to do that?" She didn't specify that it was usually spouses or significant others joining them. He could do that math on his own.

"Do you want me to?"

"I am not going around this loop again. If you would like to meet some of the people I know whom you haven't already met, you're welcome to come by Sallie's Deli around 8:30 on Monday or Thursday. If something comes up or you don't feel like it, that's good too. You have a standing invitation with no obligation. Okay?" She stuck her hand in the box and pulled out another handful of marbles as he frowned at the ones in his palm.

* * *

On Thursday after class she dug her phone out of her bag afterwards and found a text, "Sry 3 more boxes stn home L8."

The following Monday the text said, "Ms H nds hlp w piano."

She had to miss the next class for a case that had them hiking two miles through not-quite unused subway tunnels. She hadn't seen him that gleeful about creative criminal activity since he discovered the bee assassins.

The week after that, as she got ready to leave, he was sitting on the floor in front of the media closet sorting cables. "You don't have to text me," she said. "Come or don't come. No explanation needed. It's fine."

He nodded but didn't look up, his hands stilled, three black cords pulled taut between them. After a moment he lowered them to his lap, then jerked one cord to drop into the pile on his right. He usually looked at ease and comfortable sitting on the floor but from this angle he seemed stiff, tense. As if waiting for a blow.

She'd had to fight him over and over again not to leave her behind when he thought it wouldn't be safe for her, but he never complained when she left him out to protect him from boredom. Perhaps she should allow him make that call for himself.

"Do you want to come with me now, observe the class, and then go eat with us after?"

He looked at her, appraising, as if suspicious he was being managed. Then he dropped the remaining cords and hopped up to his feet in one of those quicksilver motions she'd never been able to emulate when she tried to do it herself behind her closed bedroom door.

"Just do me a favor and save your critique of my form and your disdain for kickboxing as a martial art—"

"It is not," he grumbled under her ready glare.

"—until after we're home again."

"Any other stipulations?"

"I hope not."

* * *

She wasn't sure who would accompany them to dinner, the Sherlock who charmed her family, the one who pointed out that her friends' opinions weren't particularly worth notice, or the one who interrogated people to figure out what makes them tick. Once the introductions were made, she told the story of the currency heist during the blizzard. He interrupted only to give her credit for Pam's continued help. After that example of their work, she redirected conversation to focus on other classmates. He answered a few questions about London and the differences between the NYPD and Scotland Yard when Oscar laughed that everything he knew about them came from TV shows. She observed him observing, a bit more reticent than she expected, but apparently relaxed in his introversion, if the lack of bouncing knee was any measure.

He'd been startled to realize the group did not know what their previous relationship had been. At first he was irritated that she would continue to let external factors dictate her behavior, but over the course of the meal, the complexity of her position became more apparent. The unrelenting pressure that she must be partnered romantically, in conjunction with assumptions about her personality based on her ethnic origins, created a mire of spoken and unspoken expectations. And this among a group of friendly acquaintances who themselves presented a variety of ethnic backgrounds and sexual orientations. Their partnership only confused the situation, and a stray remark at the table about a junkie's girlfriend that made her stiffen slightly revealed what he'd overlooked, that she would be as judged by his history as he was, pestered by questions and assumptions about why she would stoop or belittle herself by continuing to associate with him. Add in her likely concern that he might think she believed those things, and no wonder she strictly limited her social outings.

* * *

She was quiet in the cab on the way home, head turned to the window so he couldn't see her expression.

"I know you're going to blow this off, but thank you," he said, and he saw the smile spread to the side of her face as she shook her head.

"You're welcome."

"That's not how it goes."

"That's how it's supposed to go. Someone thanks you, you say you're welcome. Conventionality is not always a bad thing."

"It is for people like us."

"People who what, ah, love everything bizarre and outside the humdrum routine of ordinary life?"

He blinked in surprise. He recalled saying those words to her, at the time only just realizing he wanted something impossible — impossible for him and certainly impossible for her — and not knowing how to proceed.

"Yes, exactly," he said.

* * *

This time she was in her room, folding laundry, when it came over her. There was a crash from the main floor, and before she could call to him, he'd shouted, 'Watson— Oh, never mind, I've got it," followed by heavy footfall and another crash. Best guess given the sounds, he'd tried to pull a box off the top shelf of the media closet by balancing on one of the lower shelves, which were not designed for such strain. She started to laugh as she turned back to the laundry basket when the tears came.

"It has its costs," he'd said, but they were not what she'd imagined back then, at the beginning.

It was overwhelming. The strangeness, and the joy, and the terror and horror of the things they learned people could do to each other, and somehow not being alone with all of that. She suspected that was as odd for him as for her, not feeling put out by having the other's constant company. More than that, feeling better in that company. That was the frightening part, the implied loss of self-sufficiency. Belonging here meant she had something new to lose.

She'd told him that partnership meant they'd never both give up at the same time, but that was as impossible a promise as the ones she'd chided him for making. Instead, she had to have faith, in herself, that she wouldn't let go, and in him, that if he did, he'd come back.

That night after he fled with Irene, she had asked herself if she still had a partner and believed immediately when the answer was "Yes." That's the voice she would trust. She wiped her eyes and finished putting her clothes away before going to see what sort of mess he'd gotten into.

When he heard her coming down the stairs, he called out, "You'll never guess what I found in here, Watson," and she grinned, guessing.


	3. Chapter 3: Months

_"This is your home."_

* * *

"Dammit." Joan tossed the letter and its torn envelope onto the teetering stack of discarded newspapers and magazines behind the library couch. The blue plastic city recycling bin had long since been repurposed for experiments that rendered it unsuitable for keeping indoors. Every few weeks they used a random number generator to determine who had to lug the pile out to the curb before it started cascading over onto the seat cushions. (They were both of them unreliable narrators regarding who had done it the last time.) He preferred even numbers and she liked odd ones, so at least they didn't have to argue about that.

Sherlock grunted as he worked on a lock, not looking up. "What?"

"My storage unit's building is being converted to condos. I'm being evicted. Have to move my stuff in the next 30 days." She gritted her teeth in preparation for his recitation of the absurdity of paying to store stuff she could discard or move to the brownstone. Of course she wasn't actually paying, although she suspected her former landlord wasn't going to stick with their deal much longer.

"Hmm." He scowled at the lock in his hands, a sawed-off section of a cast iron gate that must weigh 20 pounds. It was most likely gouging a sizable dent in the table as he rotated it around the axis of one of its bars and balanced the mass between his hands.

"That's it? 'Hmm'? You don't have anything else to say about this?"

"No." He bit the word off tightly, with none of the usual indications that he was holding back.

She eyed him skeptically as he continued to poke around inside the keyhole. There was a loud click and half the piece crashed to the table, almost catching his fingers underneath. He turned to look back at her then, eyes gleaming as he exclaimed "Ha!" She smiled back, shaking her head, and went upstairs.

* * *

When he heard her door bang lightly against the wall and the bed springs whimper, he set the other half of the lock down and sighed. "What are thinking, Watson?" he murmured to the dark metal segments under his hands.

* * *

She noticed the small unmarked box truck pulling away from the curb on their block as she came home from kickboxing class. It was the third week of the month, an unusual move-in date for their mostly rental-unit street, and too late in the day for furniture or appliance delivery. She wondered if one of their neighbors had just been robbed. Or surveilled. No doubt Sherlock was on it, but she'd ask so he'd know she was paying attention. She committed the license place number to memory as she jogged up the steps to the brownstone's door.

He was coming down the stairs as she opened the inner door, brushing his hands on his pants as if they'd gotten dusty.

"Watson, you're early. I didn't expect you for another hour."

"The deli was closed for some family thing, and I don't like the place some of the others wanted to go to instead. Picked up some sushi on the way home," and she waved the plastic box in her hand. "I got extra if you want any. Just vegetarian, no fish, so no parasitic threats."

He grimaced. "What's the point—"

"—I like seaweed and rice and avocado, all right? Jeez. More for me, if you're going to condemn all sushi no matter what."

He raised his eyebrows at her vehemence as he rounded the bottom of the stairs and continued past her. "Sencha or jasmine pearl?" he asked on his way down to the kitchen.

She sat down on the bottom step to unlace her shoes, sighing. "Jasmine. Thanks."

"The water's already hot, so it'll just be a few minutes," he called back. He was scrupulous about water temperature and steeping time for green teas, and while she found his insistence somewhat grating, the tea did taste better when treated properly. She left her shoes by her gym bag under the coat hooks and followed him down instead of heading up to the shower first. Her stomach growled, supporting her choice.

She set the sushi box on the kitchen table and cracked the plastic top off before going to the cupboard to get tamari and a dish to pour it in. "Hey, so what's up with the truck that just left outside? Any nefarious activity we should be tracking?"

His head shot up, startled, and she saw his eyes dart as if looking for escape routes before he composed his face and started to respond.

"Wait, was that you? Why are you having the neighbours watched?" She stood by the stove, tamari bottle in one hand, dish in the other.

"What? No, no. I think Mrs. Seser's cousin's husband was moving in. Or maybe her husband's cousin." He waggled his hand dismissively. "No matter. Something about an unpaid internship making a basement hovel appealing for the summer."

"Really." She thought he was blinking slightly faster than usual. She sat down at the table but didn't start eating, eyeing him intently.

"Watson, I commend you for your observational acumen. You're usually quite oblivious after your Monday class; I'd been thinking about devising some stamina-improving exercises, but perhaps it's the deli that's to blame. A heavy meal following exercise is not a recipe for acute sensory performance."

She narrowed her eyes. "Trying too hard. You need to work on that tell. What are you up to?"

His phone's timer chimed, and he turned abruptly to finish preparing the tea. "I'm not doing anything to the neighbours. Or about them. You can ask Mrs. Seser yourself." He brought the teapot over to the table and stepped back to collect two small handleless cups.

She sat down and watched him pour the tea. His hands were steady, and the liquid smoothly filled each cup, no splash. It took a moment for the jasmine fragrance to reach her. She did love that smell, and she knew he knew she did. He wanted to distract her from whatever was going on, and she was hungry and tired. If he was reluctant to give it up, she didn't have the energy to get it out of him tonight.

He stared into his tea as she ate, eventually plucking one of the sushi rolls out of the box to pop into his mouth, as she knew he would.

"Oh, I almost forgot," she said, holding her cup close to her face. "Karen said to tell you she knows someone who knows someone who might be able to translate that Kyrgyz text. You can call her or come to dinner after class next time." He nodded to his tea, still untouched.

"Do you know why she won't use email?"

"Dyslexia," he said into his cup.

"Is that a deduction, or do you actually know?" It took three seconds before he sputtered and responded with indignation. Something was definitely on his mind.

* * *

_She threw her phone down on the couch in frustration. Not again. Not again! The bastard lied to her outright, not only that Moriarty hadn't called but that he was on his way home. She stuffed her arms into her coat and grabbed the clone from the mantle. The GPS coordinates indicated he really was at the prison, so she could easily get to the address Moriarty had sent before he did. She was tempted to bring his singlestick and aim for the pate._

_How long would she have waited here alone if she hadn't seen this coming? What if he had never come back?_

_When she got to the address, it was full dark, and the location was the funeral home they'd broken into days before. She hesitated at the entrance, door ajar. He called to her from inside, "Watson, hurry up, I need you to autopsy Moriarty!"_

_Confused and wary, she slipped inside. He was standing next to a gurney with a sheet-covered body. As she came closer, she could see its torso rise and fall. Sherlock adjusted the lamp overhead and bounced with impatience. "Come on, Watson! If we want to know what Moriarty is planning, you must open the chest cavity now."_

_"What? Sherlock! She's breathing — I can't cut into a living person." Panic rose, tightening around her throat._

_He scowled down at her, angry. "Why must you block me at every turn? I'm doing this for your own good," and he thrust the scalpel at her over the body. "I'll hold him down; we haven't time for your squeamishness."_

_She looked at her hand to see she was now holding his butterfly knife, and Moran grinned up at her from the gurney. "I've led a charmed life," he jeered, folding the sheet down to expose his own chest._

_She stepped back, dropping the knife to the floor. "No. This is wrong. That's not— This is not what happened."_

_"Oh Watson," Sherlock said, voice as full of condescension as Moriarty's had been at the restaurant. "I had hoped you might be useful, but all you do is get in my way with your limitations and your indecisions. This is why I'm leaving with Irene. She is a woman who knows her own mind!"_

_"I know what I want!" but he turned away, and she could see the bullet wound in his shoulder, her stitches uneven and his skin angry red around it. She started after him, but Moran sat up and grabbed her wrist with a black-gloved hand, leering. "Since Sherlock has made his choice, let's you and me see what we can get up to…" gesturing with his head to the tall tripod behind them._

_She twisted her hand in his grip and jerked to the right, brought her left knee up sharply to ram his extended elbow, and exclaimed as he pushed her to the ground—_

—And woke up half off the bed, catching herself with an outstretched hand on the floor, jarring her arm all the way up to her neck, her shout cut short into a harsh grunt by the impact. She hitched herself back up to the top, wincing at the new tightness at the base of her skull and the throbbing beginning to bloom at the crown, beating in time with her racing heart and the rapid footsteps up the stairs coming to a crescendo outside her door.

"I'm all right," she called out, pressing her thumb against the knot in her neck.

The doorknob rattled and went still, but he didn't push it open. "All right," came his quiet echo outside the door, and after a long pause she heard his steps going back down.

Her head was pounding, mouth tacky, and she'd finished her water before turning off the light, however long ago that was. She turned to look, tripping a spike of pain in her neck. "Ow." The clock read 1:17. She hadn't even been in bed two hours this time. It was going to be a long night.

* * *

By the time she came down to the kitchen, he was hunched over an array of papers on the low table in his room, a glass of ice water and a mug waiting for her next to the stove where the kettle was still steaming.

"Didn't know if you'd want hot or cold," he said, not looking up. She didn't like fuss.

"Thanks."

In his peripheral vision he could see her in front of the stove, swaying slightly in her oversized burgundy sweater, brows furrowed as one hand rubbed where her neck met her shoulder. Headache as well, apparently. Remember to set out the ibuprofen next time. Or would that cross a line? She had asked him to sit with her once, many months ago. If she had experienced anything like that night again, he was unaware of it. There have been nightmares, though, like tonight. She woke up, collected herself, and came down for something to drink. In her place, he wouldn't want questions. (Didn't.)

"What are you working on?" she asked a short while later as he closed one file and reached into the box for another.

"Cold cases. Checking the temperature, as it were, to see if any of them seem warmer than the rest."

"Hmm." She nodded, hands on the kitchen table, cupping the glass of water. "And?"

"Nothing yet."

She got up and walked over to the doorway, still rubbing her neck. "How do you 'check the temperature'? What do you look for?"

Her physical discomfort distracted him; he knew two or three pressure points that might alleviate the pain, if only she would ask. He pressed his own temple instead. "It's partly simple pattern recognition, a quick scan for details that might match with new cases I've studied recently. But over the years I've also noted an unconscious recognition of connection that appears inexplicable but frequently leads me to new discovery."

"You mean you get a hunch."

"Some might classify it as such. I do not."

"Of course you don't." She started to shake her head, laughing at him, then yelped in pain. "Ow! Any chance you have a heating pad? Did something to my neck when I woke up."

"No heating pad. Might have a hot water bottle up— Not really the right shape, however." He hesitated. "If I may… I have had good results with accupressure, myself. I could show you."

"Okay." She sounded wary, walking over to where he sat. "This isn't some experiment, right?"

"Yes Watson, you're on to me. I lie in wait in the wee hours for a random sample of subjects with strained muscles to walk into my kitchen." He reached up to take her hand, and she jerked it away with a step back, startling them both.

She stopped immediately and stepped toward him again, flustered and embarrassed. "Sorry. Reflex. In my dream—" She took another step, and sat down slowly on the couch next to him. "Sorry."

He looked away and nodded, chewing the inside of his lip, staring across the room at the fireplace. "Ah." His eye started twitching. "Did you want to talk…?"

"No." She sighed. "No. It was just a dream." She held out her arm to him. "You said something about a pressure point?"

* * *

Despite the broken sleep, she woke up early, pleasantly surprised by the absence of the knot in her neck. She stretched and turned onto her side, idly watching the shifting shadows on the cloth draped over her window. She should probably spring for actual curtains at some point. Or dig out her old ones. She coughed a small laugh at herself and groaned, remembering the storage unit problem she'd been avoiding. She'd lived here almost a year and the room was still a blank slate. She honestly liked it this way, plain and bare, a refuge from the chaos of details elsewhere in the brownstone. She was sorely tempted to ignore the eviction notice and leave her old mess behind without a second look.

She sighed and rubbed her hands over her face before pushing her pillow up and scooting back a bit to lean against the wall. She wasn't going to do that. Ignoring it hadn't actually removed the distractions that continued to encumber her thoughts, occasionally making her stumble. It was time to collect her baggage, literal and figurative, and deal with it.

Part of her nightmare was like phantom-limb pain, synapses firing over something that didn't exist any more. Old fears, neural patterns lingering like her flinch when he reached for her hand. The sight of the breathing body and a knife in her grasp was different; some doubts still had a hand-hold in her psyche. Sherlock's reflex to protect her wasn't going away on its own, either. But the dream's anxieties that he would choose someone else over her, or that he would abandon her because he found her wanting, those were unfounded.

This was her home, now. This building, which housed their partnership. She was sure of that and comfortable with it, as long as she didn't attempt to deconstruct the how and why. Those questions weren't what woke her up gasping in the middle of the night. Whether she decided to unpack her past here or find a way to let it go, bringing it home was the first step.

The past months, of tension and upheaval and strain, of novelty and adventure and reinvention, were giving way to another stage. Settling, or something like it. Not the way she had settled previously, accepting without caring or commitment. Rather it seemed that she was finding new purchase as she scrambled out of the shattered foundation of who she used to be. She didn't fear that the bottom might drop out from under her or the roof come crashing down anymore. Unless she thought about it too long and started to worry about her lack of worry…

She sat up and pushed the covers back. None of that. Time to ask Sherlock which room she could use for her stuff.

* * *

"What do you mean, 'that won't be necessary'? And don't say 'you're a detective now,' it's annoying."

He snapped his mouth shut and marched over to the recycling pile behind the couch, flipping through the top layer to pull out her eviction notice. "You left this here, in our shared public space. It came to my attention again some days ago, and given that no action plan was in place and the deadline loomed, I took steps of my own."

"Steps of your own. With my stuff?" She glared at him, his fists clenched at his sides, standing pike-straight by the side of the couch for a few seconds before he took off across the floor to sit at the far end of the study, facing his scanners. She resisted the urge to pull out her own hair and took a breath. Another. Of course. "The box truck last night."

He hunched his shoulders and made a motion toward the scanner volume knob, than pulled his hand back into a fist, tapping it lightly on edge of the desk. He mumbled something she couldn't hear. She went over to sit in the wingback chair in the corner near him, and he shifted uneasily on his stool before repeating himself.

"I said, I did not intend to invade your privacy. Nothing was opened or examined. I just— Well. It was the least I could do." He looked over at her without turning his head, darting glances.

"The least? What are you talking about?"

"You moved in as my sober companion assuming it would be temporary, but despite joining me in partnership, you have continued to live very lightly here all these months since. To the outside observer, there is little evidence anyone inhabits the brownstone but me. And yet, as I told you some time ago, your presence has made a difference. A significant difference. To me. This is your home as long as you want it to be. And I didn't want you to lose your belongings because you weren't certain it was the right decision."

"You might have said something."

That brought his head around, indignant. "I raised the question more than once, but you were adamant in your disinterest, so I stopped."

She tilted her head in acknowledgment, and he broke his stare. She couldn't argue that he hadn't tried to broach the subject. Obnoxiously and repeatedly. She picked at a loose thread in the upholstery, but when it started to unravel at a seam she tried pressing it back into the crease with little success. A tiny fringe sprouted where the thread had been, and she guiltily laid her hand over it, hoping he wouldn't notice the damage. Home furnishing was clearly not her forte. Reassurance, however, she could manage.

"I am certain, you know."

He looked up, frowning, eyes wide and dark.

"I may be ambivalent about my things, and you have no idea — though you probably think you do — how much I don't want to tackle the mess I left behind. But there's no ambivalence about being here. Not about _me_ being here. Working with you and living in this house. This is what I want. Okay?"

He nodded with a small strained smile, and looked away again. His eyes followed the flicker of the silent scanner display on his monitor, but his shoulders eased, and his were hands still. She absentmindedly rubbed the web of her left hand where the pressure point he'd shown her was.

"So where did you put it all, anyway?"

"In the room next to yours." She laughed, and he shrugged. "It's the most logical location. The room's easily twice the size of your storage unit so I didn't even have to remove the things I'd been keeping in there."

"Please tell me that none of your things fall into the 'animate' category."

"You've been living next to that room for almost a year, and now you care what's in it?"

"Yeah." Her turn to shrug. "I guess I do."

* * *

When another month passed without her entering the room, he insisted on a plan of attack. "It is absurd, Watson. If you don't take care of it, I will take matters into my own hands."

"You already did," she grumbled into her cereal, thinking wistfully of the now-demolished building that could have been the solution to all her problems at the moment. "You just want to see if I have any incriminating photographs."

He stood up and took his bowl to the sink. "I'm going to spend the next two hours on the Rogers case, and then I'm heading upstairs. With or without you." He turned sharply on his toes and left the kitchen. She made a face and dropped her head onto her folded arms.

When he got there two hours later, she was sitting on the floor of the room surrounded by some emptied boxes and two piles of sorted items. She didn't turn around when he came in.

"You've got more stuff in here than I realized," she said.

"This is where I stashed some things just before going to Hemdale. I admit I've avoided revisiting the past stored in here as well."

She nodded, still facing away away from him. "You know I'd help with yours, too."

"I do."

She brushed her hands on her thighs and twisted around to look at him over her shoulder. "Would you pass me a another box, please? Let's see what else I've been hiding." He pulled one off the stack closest to the door and stood by her side as she opened it.

-end-


End file.
